


Colorblind

by suchaprettyface



Series: The Dreamfasting [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Broken Woobie Loki, M/M, Not porn, finally an explanation, mythology what mythology, oh the angst, snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4381331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchaprettyface/pseuds/suchaprettyface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which we finally discover what the hell caused the dreamfasting.  </p>
<p>Incidentally I am pretty well versed in Norse mythology, I just can't be arsed to deal with that whole family tree given that these are not actual gods but fictionalized versions of them.  (Yes there is a difference.  I dated an actual Heathen for two years and they are serious about their lore.)  I only bring this up because I'm about to do naughty things with a character's origins, and I don't want anyone to be all "But that's not how it happened!  Critical research fail!"  </p>
<p>Anyway - I'd like to say this'll all make sense in the end because of my Grand Plan, but I'm making it up as I go along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colorblind

The Avengers don’t have “small” missions, and we don’t have normal relationships. 

Natasha was silently searching the globe for a man who transformed into a big green monster. Tony and Pepper almost qualified, but it seemed like every time they got close to domestic bliss, there was a global catastrophe – or a Tony catastrophe. God might have given him a genius intellect but he was an idiot beyond compare when it came to women, or at least women who expected more from him than a drunken fling. 

Clint, who definitely came closest to average in the relationship department, had kept an entire marriage and family a total secret from everyone but Tash, and there was no way to call a life where your garage contained tools for making nursery furniture and exploding laser arrows “normal.”

Meanwhile Thor, immortal alien royalty and a musclebound warrior, was involved with a human astrophysicist. And I’d noticed lately that when we were all assembled, if I asked the Vision a question, he’d look up sheepishly from quietly watching…Wanda. 

Now that was a weird one. It was weird on levels I didn’t even have words for. But it didn’t seem like she’d noticed yet, or if she had, she was pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t like he was ogling or creeping up on her; if anything he treated her with even greater deference, and looked at her with something like wonder, maybe wondering what to call that fluttering feeling that happens, the strange but pleasant tension in your stomach and chest, becoming suddenly tongue-tied when they smile. 

I knew what to call it. But I wasn’t much of an authority on everyday romance either. 

Maybe it would look bizarre to the outside world (who was I kidding – to anyone but us), but I’d fallen into something of a routine with Loki, another member of outer space royalty, currently living in a prison for magical criminals. After whatever work I had to do during the day, whether a mission off base or some kind of publicity circus or just training, I’d go to bed in my quarters, have amazing dreams, and then wake up and slip down into the Zoo to spend the rest of the night. It was the best scenario I could think of – we got to go wherever we wanted and do whatever we liked far from prying eyes or judgment, and also had a chance to wake up together in the real world. I knew it was more than most people have.

Not to mention I got to see some jaw-dropping things: sunset over Asgard, the star-scattered violet sky of the third moon of Chairosca, the hot springs on Navaroth. Hidden forests and falls here on Earth. Dubai, Marrakech, Monaco. Most of the time I let him pick the destination, and I was always glad. Awake or not, after a couple of months I was pretty sure I’d had sex more places than Tony had.

It wasn’t just sex, though. There were plenty of nights that were just…well, dates, I guess, though even the traditional dinner and a movie always turned into something spectacular. 

I think my favorite so far was a night on some planet whose name I couldn’t pronounce, curled up in a strange tree that was covered in something like skin instead of bark, waiting until the exact moment when, every two hundred and seventy-nine Earth years, a particular kind of plant on this one planet would bloom. Everything was quiet and dark for hours, and then bam! all around us these huge three-foot-wide flowers stretched open, glowing bright blue. They released pollen grains the size of golf balls that also glowed as they rose up into the air…and then the plants started _singing_. 

Something about that song – like a choir of thousands of children, someplace war and sadness would never touch them – and the sudden understanding that no human had ever seen this before and probably never would again, made my eyes fill up, and I spent thirty-eight minutes with tears running down my face until, gradually, the song faded, the light faded, and the last few circles of floating light drifted away into the sky.

I finally closed my eyes, overwhelmed, and a moment later felt a hand tilt my chin so he could, lightly and silently, kiss my eyelids. “Look,” he said softly.

I did, and saw one of the pollen spheres, this one a luminous violet, had landed on the branch by my knee. “Can I touch it?”

“No, it would probably burn you, but…” Loki very carefully tipped the sphere onto his palm, and I watched as a green glass jar began to form around it, turning crystal clear once it was closed. “It will last a few days and then evaporate.”

I woke up that morning to see the jar sitting on my bedside table. After about three days the sphere faded, and it and the jar disappeared.

Things weren’t always that great, though. There were a number of times I fell asleep thinking I’d travel somewhere beautiful only to end up in a nightmare. Most of the time I got caught up in them for a while and then forced myself awake, the abrupt loss of contact shocking him awake too. 

Not every time.

One night I jolted awake panting with mocking alien voices in my ears, Thanos’s sickeningly familiar laughter joining with others as they goaded me into losing control, lashing out only to have the power turned back on me like being electrocuted.

I could hear screaming. I wasn’t sure if it was real, or if I was the only one who could hear it, but I didn’t care; I was out of bed and downstairs before I could think. 

The lights in the Zoo were flickering slightly, but it was easy enough to see the small cluster of people outside Cell E – Vision, Dr. Cho, Selvig, three other med staffers. None of them seemed to know what to do, but they were all watching the cell in fascination.

“Get out!” I barked. “I’ve got this.”

“Captain –“ Cho tried, but I waved her away. The medics scattered at the look on my face, and the two doctors moved back.

“Are you sure you do not require assistance, Captain Rogers?” Vision asked. “I will keep others away if you like.”

“That’s okay – thanks, though.” I hit the door code and ducked in without looking to see if any of them stayed.

The air inside the cell felt like lightning had just struck. “Loki?”

No answer, but I caught movement on the far side of the bed, and approached cautiously. “It’s me,” I said. “Just me.”

He was there, balled up with his arms over his head, shaking. 

And blue.

Memory, then: the first dream I’d had, almost these exact circumstances. I knelt next to him and very, very carefully reached out.

He jerked away from my hand, but there was nowhere to go, so my fingers lightly rested on his arm.

I gasped – the contact was painful, a burning cold, and I watched in horror as my fingers began to turn blue. 

_No. This is not going to stop me from helping him._ I concentrated and pulled energy into my hand to banish the cold and form a protective sort of shield. It might not last long but it would help.

“Hey…it’s okay…it was a dream…you’re safe.” 

He still wasn’t responding. I knew that trying to touch him too much or initiate physical affection wouldn’t be a good idea, given what he’d been dreaming, but I needed to pull him out somehow, so I settled for talking. I got in as close as I could, yanking a blanket from the bed to create a barrier between our shoulders, and leaned close to his ear, brushing the hair back. 

I was momentarily distracted by the color, and the strange ridges and lines that swept in long curves down his neck and arms. Were they some kind of camouflage? If not, what did they mean? At certain angles they caught the light like ice crystals, but they didn’t look like ice. 

Shaking myself back to the problem at hand, I took a deep breath. “Loki,” I said just above a whisper. “I know you’re scared…and I know you didn’t want me to see you like this. But I’m seeing you right now, and I still think you’re beautiful. Sure, I could go on about physical stuff – the way you touch me, those hands of yours that I dream about even when you’re not with me, the way your eyes dance when you’re laughing. But you know what really surprised me? What I can’t see from the outside. How strong you are in ways no one else knows. How scary-smart you are – I could share your memories for 900 years and not get to the bottom of everything you know. How brave you are, and how loyal. You try to play it off like it’s no big deal, but you’ve risked your life for me. You gave up your freedom for me. No one’s ever loved me like that.”

As I spoke, I took my shielded hand and lightly rubbed the back of his neck, just trying to anchor him with something safe. I moved to touch his face and hopefully get him to make eye contact, but he flinched.

“Don’t look at me,” he whispered. “Just…please don’t.”

“Okay,” I said. At least he seemed to recognize me. “How about this…” I pulled the blanket up over my arm and slid it around him, pulling his head down to my shoulder. I could still feel the cold through the fleece, but it didn’t burn. Encouraged, I kissed the top of his head through his hair; it made my lips tingle, and when I breathed out, a dragon-smoke cloud of vapor hung in the air like it was midwinter. 

Gradually, over the course of about twenty minutes, I felt him relax, and realized he’d fallen asleep. I watched as his skin began to grow pale, passing through several progressively lighter shades of blue until fading into the ivory I knew. His body temperature rose back to normal.

I sighed with relief. That could have been worse. He hadn’t broken anything striking out with his power, as I’d done before. As far as I could tell the only thing to go wrong outside this room were the flickering lights, which were fine now.

Taking my time, I pulled away and got him up into the bed where I could lay down beside him, adding another layer of normalcy to combat the dreams. Without waking up he buried his face in my neck.

It felt really nice. I was so comfortable in fact that before long I drifted off too.

This time, though, I stepped out of a shelter of rock and into an icy-cold wind that bit right through my t-shirt. My bare feet immediately went numb.

I’d figured this one out a few weeks ago, though: here in the dreamtime all I had to do was make a kind of sweeping gesture, as I’d seen Loki do, and I would have on whatever I needed for the setting. If only that trick worked in the real world! 

It might. I was afraid to try it.

Now, in much warmer clothes, I looked around, trying to figure out why this place, what I was here to see. It was nothing but craggy cliffs, cracked ground – almost no color except the rainbow of greys and grey-blues and ice blues. Dust, ice, snow, howling wind…what could possibly live here? 

Off to my right I saw a figure standing on a cliff. I resigned myself to going out there in the bitter cold, and followed the trail of footprints from where I stood.

Loki wasn’t wearing winter clothes; he had on his accustomed Asgardian green and black, this time with a long cloak that the wind almost seemed afraid to lift. He was standing there staring at what turned out to be the ruins of an enormous stone castle, now piles of rubble and half-walls, a few standing buildings but mostly destroyed.

He didn’t appear to notice the cold…oh.

I looked around with new eyes. Wasteland, ruin. Desolation and loneliness. 

“Is this where you were born?” I asked. My voice barely registered on the wind, but I knew he could hear me.

He lowered his eyes, then nodded. I couldn’t quite read the emotion in his face. Probably because there were about ten there at once.

Without speaking, he held out his hand; when I took it, the scene lurched, and I managed to keep my balance in time to realize I was now standing inside the ruins.

The castle had been big at a distance, but close up it was gigantic. Even the remaining doorways had to be at least ten feet tall. I thought about what Thor had said back when I asked him about the Jotuns: that Loki, who was taller than most humans including me, was a runt, and that was a shameful thing here. But would they really just throw away a baby for that?

“There’s a reason the Frost Giants are painted as monsters,” Loki said to my unvoiced thought. “They are, by nature, cold inside and out.”

“Are you sure that was the only reason?”

He shot me a look of unexpected hurt. “What further defects do you think I have?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I just wonder if…maybe something else was going on. Did the King have any idea who you were when you came here?”

“Not that I could tell.”

My gut was giving me a story there was no way I could verify, but something about the idea felt certain, and way more right than what I knew so far.

“Do you think he knew about you at all?”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m just wondering…was there a Queen? Do you know anything about your biological mother?”

Again, a look I couldn’t interpret, but he frowned…was it possible he hadn’t thought about this before? Given how he felt about his race, I’d say he hadn’t wanted to. 

Unfortunately he didn’t come to the same conclusion I did. “So you’re saying not only am I one of these creatures, I’m a bastard at that – some affair between Laufey and a Jotun woman whose name has never been mentioned? And that this woman hid my birth and then waited until Asgard was sure to destroy the city to abandon me somewhere I would surely die?”

“I’m saying your mother might not have been Jotun at all. Have you thought of that? You don’t really know a whole lot about these people except that small offspring are a bad thing. Maybe you’re short for one of them, but you’re a logical height for a human or an Asgardian. Did they keep prisoners or slaves or anything from the worlds they conquered? This was almost a thousand years ago, after all. There’s a long, awful history of slave owners raping and impregnating their slaves back on Earth. Or, maybe he really loved her. That’s possible too. But what if she didn’t leave you out in the ruins to die, but so that you’d be found - by someone who would save you?”

Loki stared at me for a minute, then smiled gently, his anger melting most of the way. His words could have been mocking, but instead they held nothing but affection. “Oh, Steven…I do love your heart.”

“I don’t guess there’s any way to DNA test and see if I’m right.”

“Not really. I suppose there might be a spell of some sort to reveal someone’s true parentage, but if there is, I do not know it. Odin might have known more than he let on – he knew whose son I was, after all, though he didn’t say how he knew. Unless I was in a box with a sign that said ‘tiny prince, free to a good home.’” 

I laughed at that. “Come on,” I said. “We don’t need to stay here unless there’s something you’re looking for.”

He cast a glance around. “Perhaps there is…but I doubt I will ever find it. Let’s go.”

I was grateful to leave. I expected to reappear somewhere more welcoming, or at least a little warmer, but when I next opened my eyes I actually opened them, and was back in the bed in Cell E just in time to hear Fury’s voice:

_“Captain Rogers, please report to Conference Room 5.”_

“Damn it,” I muttered. I had a second’s hope that at least I was the only one awakened by the call, but as I tried to sit up, hands closed around my upper arms and hauled me back down on the bed. I laughed.

“I have to go,” I said. 

Loki nipped my ear and wrapped himself around me, arms around my chest. “Tell Fury you’ve been conquered by a hostile alien force.”

“Hostile,” I repeated. I twisted back and kissed him hard, pushing my tongue into his mouth while I reached down with one hand to take light but decisive hold of his already-hardening cock. “I don’t really think that’s the word, do you?”

A groan. “Fine, then. Tell Fury you’ve been conquered by a sexually frustrated alien force and won’t be available for at least…four hours? Perhaps five.”

I gave him a grin. “Sorry,” I said. “Duty calls. I can’t start shirking my responsibilities.”

Loki shut his eyes. “Go, then, but hurry.”

“Why are your eyes closed?”

“Because if I have to watch you walk that lovely ass out of this room I may go completely insane.”

I stopped at the security panel and dialed the conference room. “Sir, if you need me in uniform, I’m going to need a few minutes. I don’t even have shoes on.”

_“Come as you are, Captain. This isn’t a mission briefing.”_

I knew there was no point in asking what it was, if not a mission, but I felt a low ripple of disquiet as I took the elevator up, wondering what else Fury could want with me. It almost had to have something to do with Loki. That meant it probably wasn’t going to be fun.

I hate it when I’m right.

Fury wasn’t alone in the conference room; Natasha was with him, but surprisingly so was Thor.

“You’re finally back,” I said.

“I apologize for my lengthy absence,” Thor replied. “The Allfather had work for me to attend to, and I thought it best not to deny him and reveal my true errand. I enlisted the aid of a scholar I knew I could trust, but it still took many days to find anything relevant. When we did, however…”

He gestured at the table, where there were two books: one, the sort of huge leather-bound tome I would have expected from a place called the Hall of Lore; the other, about 8x10” and slim, with a ribbon bookmark dangling from it.

“According to the scholar, there used to be several volumes in the Hall that contained extensive research on the dreamfasting – they have all disappeared. He knew not when or how. We did manage to find one of the missing books…in fact we found both of these together, hidden. The text within contains detailed instructions on how to create a dreamfasting. It is not in fact a miracle of fate, but a spell.”

“Someone did this to us deliberately,” I said. “Who?”

Thor opened the larger book to a page that was already marked. “Note that there are two forms of writing on the page. One matches the rest of the book; the other matches what is in this second book. I knew as soon as I saw this what must have happened, but it wasn’t until the second was found that I knew for sure. In fact that was the difficult part, finding this without Father knowing.”

He slid the smaller book toward me. The book was covered in purple silk, with tiny beads sewn in, and there was a silver plate on the front with Runes stamped into it. 

Before Thor could tell me, I read it aloud, ignoring the wide-eyed looks that got me. “Frigga, Queen of Asgard,” 

I eased the cover open and turned a few pages – every one was covered in neat writing exactly like the marginalia in the big book, and a couple of other languages here and there. There were also intricate diagrams, astrological charts, and lists of what looked like ingredients.

“This was her spellbook,” I said. It felt wrong to touch it, like I was desecrating it.

“More than that,” Thor told me. “She kept detailed notes of her magical workings and experiments, but also wrote of her life. There were dozens of these books…this was the last.”

I wasn’t sure how to read the dates – Asgard’s calendar was apparently pretty different from ours. But the precise handwriting in the entries helped date it just as effectively.

_It is not that I disagree with my husband’s ruling…I understand that Loki has done unforgivable things. But I am his mother, blood be damned. I sheltered him in my heart when his own people ran from the power they saw in him. I will always forgive him. And moreover, I want to help him…I know that inside all of that pain is the loving, giving boy I raised. For two years now he has sat in his prison cell, his anger festering. He will not tell me why he committed such crimes against Midgard, but I can sense the reasons are dark and terrible and would break my heart right down the center. There is such pain in his eyes when he thinks I am not looking. I hear him talking in his sleep and the things he says are harrowing beyond my worst fears._

_The omens all point toward my death, and soon. I must act quickly; tomorrow night the planets are in proper alignment. I have the Formulary and have noted the alterations I made to the original spell. Tonight I shall perform a divination to find the right match. I plan to set my Sight upon Midgard first – if my darling Thor found his love there, perhaps so can Loki. This is ancient and dangerous magic. It would take a truly extraordinary mortal, and there may not be such a one…but I have to try._

I started laughing as I shut the book. Thor looked kind of alarmed. 

“Your mother,” I said. “Of course.” I could hear Loki’s words from weeks ago in my mind:

_“The land is always a woman, Captain. Our sustenance, our strength, our mother. She knew that if the two could only meet and get to know each other, they would love each other—that’s the sort of thing a mother knows.”_

“Can you read the spell?” I asked. 

Thor shook his head. “This is High Ceremonial Asgardian, at least five centuries older than I. Even the scholar could only decipher about half.”

I stared at it for a moment, and pieces of it started to make sense – a little here and there, nothing really useful. But if I was already picking up on it, that meant… “Loki can read it.”

“How do you know?” Tash asked.

“Because I almost can. I get…cross pollination, I guess, from his head. Not just memories but languages and…some skills.” I quickly diverted the subject so I wouldn’t have to tell them about learning to work with the magic. “I take it you want me to take this to him.”

“We need to know if this thing can be broken,” Fury said.

My heart lurched. “We do?”

He gave me one of his “motherfucker” looks. “Are you serious, Cap? Of course we do. You’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with it, but the fact is, as long as you’ve got Public Enemy Number One in your head, you’re compromised. And eventually it’s going to get out. What are you going to tell the whole world?”

“He’s a mass murderer, Steve,” Nat said. “There’s a memorial wall in New York with the names of all the people his army killed. You might not have known Phil Coulson, but you know Barton and Selvig.”

“I haven’t forgotten any of that,” I said through gritted teeth.

Fury shook his head. “I get that it wasn’t out of his own free will, but that’s the problem – you know that, and we believe you when you say it, but the rest of the world is never going to see the person you think you know. They’re going to see a genocidal lunatic who has some kind of hold over their national symbol of truth and justice.”

“I don’t know what I have to do to get through to everyone,” I burst out. “I’m not my uniform. Sometimes I want things that aren’t pure and right and patriotic. Occasionally I curse. I jaywalk. And I fall stupid in love with the absolute wrong person. Not a damn one of you can see past the shield – but you know who can? Loki. And just because I like that, and I want that, doesn’t make me a naïve idiot.”

They all just stared at me for a minute.

“Are you sure about that?” Natasha asked carefully. “That it’s love, I mean. Or is part of the reason you don’t want to break the spell because you don’t think it’s real, and you don’t want to lose it?”

To avoid saying something I’d regret, I looked over at Thor, wondering what he thought of the whole thing. He didn’t seem to be listening; he had his mother’s journal open to the last page, his fingers lightly touching her writing…her last days, written out with full knowledge that they were her last.

“It is time,” he read in a quiet voice. “I feel a great sense of dread about tomorrow. It goes far beyond my own demise. I fear for my family. Odin will fare badly without me; I have been his balance as much as his wife. Thor will grieve deeply but well, and he will come out all the stronger. As for my Loki…I have done all I can to right our wrongs. The dreamfasting is strong – its strength is far greater than I anticipated. I hope it will bring him peace…bring them both peace, he and this human. I know I chose well. The spell will activate as soon as they meet again, and I have Seen when that will be. All I can do for my boys now is leave them my love eternal, and then watch over them from the stars.”

Thor shut the book. His eyes were bright. “I must side with the Captain,” he said. “If this was my mother’s last act of will, I cannot be a party to destroying it. She did this for my brother, and it has already done more for him than anything I have ever attempted. For his sake, and for her memory, it must not be broken.”

I nearly felt weak with relief just to have someone on my side. 

“Thor, you do understand our position here,” Fury said. “You care about Loki, and that’s admirable, but we have to take care of our own first. This is going to burn Captain Rogers’ career and reputation to the ground, and probably take all of ours with it. The fact that he doesn’t care about that tells me this is way worse than some infatuation. What happens when Loki decides to take advantage of that?”

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Fury stared at me. “Give me one reason I should believe that.”

“Because I said it,” I snapped. I was about ready to punch him in his good eye. 

Looking from one of us to the other, Natasha decided to be the voice of reason. “Okay, look…we might be getting ahead of ourselves here. Until we have the thing translated we don’t even know if it can be broken, let alone how to do it. So we send the whole thing down to the Zoo, and once we know what it says, go from there.”

“Assuming we can even believe whatever Loki tells us it says.”

I glared at Fury. “You have a better idea?”

After a moment, he huffed out an aggravated breath. “Not really. Go on, find out what it says. Let’s regroup in 24 hours.”

Without saying anything else, I picked up the big book and took the journal when Thor held it out to me. 

I walked out of the conference room fuming, even though logically I couldn’t blame them for doubting me. In Fury’s position I sure wouldn’t have put me back on duty. But either he trusted me or he didn’t – and apparently he didn’t, hadn’t, wouldn’t, in spite of what he’d said before. 

I realized that I couldn’t go straight downstairs, not in the mindset I was in. It had already been a difficult enough night for Loki without me having a temper tantrum – and while I trusted him to tell me exactly what the spellbook said, I knew that he’d break the dreamfasting in a heartbeat if it would make my life easier. Not to mention I wasn’t sure how he would react finding out Frigga had been responsible for this whole thing. 

I dropped off the two books in my quarters, got some shoes, and went for a run. 

There was a lighted track all around the edge of the property; in half an hour I could make the whole thing about fifteen times at speed, and I was definitely not in a jogging mood. Getting outside, and moving, helped – the thoughts spinning around in my head eventually evened out enough that I could let some of the anger dissipate. I wasn’t any less confused, really, but at least I didn’t feel like a Roman candle about to go off. 

Thankfully it was late enough that hardly anyone was about, so I didn’t have to make small talk in the elevator or pretend to be glad to see anyone. I took a scalding hot shower, and by the time I took the stairs back down to the Zoo, books in hand, I was verging on okay.

Just outside the cell door, I stopped, blinking a couple of times to make sure I was seeing what my brain said I was.

“Check.”

I wasn’t sure where the chessboard had come from, but that was hardly the weirdest thing about the tableau: Vision, forehead stone and cape and all, sitting across the table from Loki, who was eyeing the board thoughtfully with his chin in his hand. Loki, sitting cross-legged, had on that long robe he favored, so his inborn elegance was an easy match for Vision’s regal bearing – though I could see a bare foot sticking out from amid the black and green silk. 

I rarely ever saw Loki in someone else’s company; it made me pause, looking at him the way other people must see him these days. I knew he was perfectly capable of assuming the imperious demeanor and steel-eyed coldness most people would associate with him, but that rarely showed anymore. Here, at least for now, there was no one chasing him, nothing to fear. And now he was making friends, or at least was comfortable enough with Vision to play chess. 

I felt horribly guilty right then. It had been months since he’d let himself be imprisoned, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder if he’d made friends with anyone. He seemed content enough, but what about all the hours of the day when I was off saving the world? Apparently my mind had decided he spent the whole time reading, or something. 

The consequences of breaking the dreamfasting, if it could be done, could be terrible for everyone. Fury obviously hadn’t considered that. The whole reason Frigga had set the spell was to help Loki find peace; what if that was taken away? Would he revert to who he’d been before? As he’d said, Thanos wasn’t to blame for all of his transgressions. Hurt, anger, jealousy, having something to prove…he’d set all that down here, for now, for me. If our feelings for each other were breakable, what about all of that? It had only been a couple of months since he’d made me that promise back in Italy…a couple of months of good behavior versus a thousand years of scheming wasn’t a bet I wanted to make if he suffered another loss.

His long fingers lifted one of the pieces and moved it forward. “Check…and mate.”

Vision made a noise of surprise. I grinned to myself – the longer he was around the more human he acted.

Loki lifted his eyes, saw me, smiled. Vision looked back over his shoulder and gave me a nod. “Captain,” Vision said. “Just in time for me to lose spectacularly in my first real game of chess.” At my raised eyebrow he added, “I read a book on the subject.”

“Do they have chess on Asgard?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Loki replied. “There are similar games. I learned this one here on Earth.” He waved a hand over the table and the board disappeared. “A pleasure as always,” he said to his opponent, who rose smoothly and bowed. 

I stepped back to give Vision room to leave. I could feel Loki’s eyes shifting to the books I was holding – he had to recognize, if not exactly what they were, at least where they were from. I waited to say anything until I’d let the glass shut behind me and we were alone in the cell.

“Thor’s back,” I said. “He brought these…you’ve probably seen this one before.”

Wordlessly, he held out his hands, and I passed him the journal, setting the leather tome on the table and opening it to the page with the spell. I took the chair Vision had vacated and watched, resting my head on my folded hands, while Loki paged through the purple book, his fingers ghosting over Frigga’s handwriting just like Thor’s had. 

He didn’t even have to get to the entry in question before he understood. “She did this,” he said softly. “Frigga bespelled us. I should have known…should have guessed.”

“She wanted to help you,” I said. “She knew she wouldn’t be here to make things right, so she made sure someone would be. I don’t know exactly how she figured out we’d be compatible.”

“Divination,” Loki murmured without raising his eyes from the page. “She knew how to read at least a dozen oracles.”

“The others…Fury, that is…wants you to translate the spell and see if it can be broken. Thor wouldn’t have any part of it – he said if it was your mother’s will, it should stand.” He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was listening, so I added, “It’s funny…if you’d asked me a few months ago I would have agreed with Fury. Now just the thought of breaking it makes me feel sick inside. I don’t want there to be a way.”

“Of course there is a way,” he replied. “Only a truly arrogant and foolish sorcerer would draw without an eraser. There is always a counterspell or loophole…the question is whether one is willing to pay the price for it.”

“What kind of loophole are we talking about here?”

“I don’t know.” Loki didn’t put down the journal, but extended one hand to pull the leatherbound book closer and peer down at its pages. I saw his eyes flick from one side of the page to the other, then jump from one set of marginalia to another. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…I need to work on this alone, if that’s all right. I need to think in silence.”

I frowned. He’d clearly already read the whole thing just in the last few seconds. But he so rarely asked me for anything, and if he wanted some time alone, I was absolutely going to honor that. Still…it didn’t feel entirely right. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll call if you need me, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

I stood. “Okay.” I leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I’ll see you later.”

He nodded without looking up.

Shaking my head, not liking any of this, I returned to my quarters determined not to worry. I rationalized: reading that journal was bound to bring up a lot of difficult stuff, especially if there was more Frigga had done, or more she knew, that Loki had never known about. As he’d said, there was more to the story of his “adoption” than Odin let on – there had to be. That meant Frigga probably knew it too. That one sentence in the journal about “his people running” could mean a lot of things. It might just be that there weren’t a lot of sorcerers on Jotunheim, or it could mean something very specific. If there was an answer, I hoped it was in those pages.

Well part of me did. The other part dreaded what was written in there. In fact I’d had a huge pool of dread building in my stomach from the second Fury had called me upstairs. 

I collapsed on my bed. It had been a long night. I could use some normal sleep, if anything in my world could be called normal anymore. Luckily I was still dressed for it. I pushed off my shoes and socks and dragged a pillow up under my head.

I wasn’t even aware that I drifted off until I was shocked out of sleep by the sound of alarms blaring out all over the building.


End file.
